


The Soul Has Bandaged Moments

by Fiachra



Series: Sherlock AU Challenge [1]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemon Separation, Daemons, Episode: The Abominable Bride, Gen, HDM crossover, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Inspired by Poetry, Magical Realism, Magnusson is an absolute bastard, Non Consensual Daemon Touching, Post-Episode: The Abominable Bride, Same-Sex Daemons, Season/Series 04, Sherlock AU Challenge, Sherlock's Past, Sherlock's drug use, emily dickinson - Freeform, not really - Freeform, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 01:01:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7824061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiachra/pseuds/Fiachra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some would call it psychosis, others a gift. Whatever it is, both John and Sherlock have it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Soul Has Bandaged Moments

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wateryblooms](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wateryblooms/gifts).



> Maya98 and I have decided to write a Sherlock story based on various AUs and crossovers, the prompt for this one was His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman. Title comes from Emily Dickinson's poem of the same name.

_“It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.”_ \- Terry Pratchett

 _“Life is not made up of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years, but of moments.”_ \- Sarah Ban Breathnach

Sherlock hadn’t seen anything at first. Occasionally as a child he thought he saw vague, indistinct shapes cross his vision, or hear whispers on the wind. He never told anyone, he wasn’t considered normal even from a young age, he had a feeling this wouldn’t help. He never uttered a word, even when the shapes, instead of fading away as he grew older, became more and more solid until eventually they became animals. He attributed this to learning to see, to deduce, but in reality he never knew exactly. The animals were never crystal clear, never definitely solid either, until his first overdose.

When he awoke in hospital, suddenly there they were, sharper and more real than ever before. The first he saw was a raven, looking rather concerned, despite being a bird. And that was how he clearly saw his soul for the first time.

*

It became a boon for him, this new ability. The guilty would usually give themselves away unknowingly. The species each person had told him reams about their personality. When Mycroft first appeared at his bedside, with an enormous Eurasian eagle owl sitting imperiously on his shoulder, he had almost laughed aloud, it suited him so well.  
His raven named herself Selwin, but couldn’t tell Sherlock much about her origins, apart from that she had always been with him. Sherlock dubbed the apparitions “daemons”, after coming across the term in a book about Ancient Greece, but despite much searching couldn’t find much more about them. It soon became apparent that no one else was seeing them, not even Mycroft. And after the initial pleasure at having a unique ability had passed, Sherlock stumbled upon another paradox. He would always have Selwin with him, but yet…

He was alone. Alone in a world far more intriguing than people realised, and he couldn’t say a word. There was a whole discipline to explore, and it seemed like only he knew about it. It was frustrating.

*

His line of work helped provide an outlet. The more cases he solved, the more he was allowed access to, and the more he could learn about daemons. How they reacted when their humans were stressed and whether there were correlations between animal species and the type of crime committed were just two areas he explored. He always felt like he could do more if only he could bounce ideas off another person with the “Sight”, but alas none appeared.  
Until…

Enter John Watson. Former army doctor. That alone was interesting enough, until he saw that his eyes were resting on the apparently empty spot on the bench for just a fraction too long to have been accidental. Interesting. Very interesting.

“Mike can I borrow your phone?”

*

If Sherlock had had any reservations about John being something special, their daemons banished it. Selwin, like her human, was generally reserved and aloof, spending most of her time on Sherlock’s shoulder, two seemingly dark and macabre entities, still and silent. The list of daemons she enjoyed the company of was small, Lestrade’s badger, Molly’s tawny owl, Mrs. Hudson’s robin and to a lesser extent Mycroft’s eagle owl (which made Sherlock glad Mycroft couldn’t see them). But with John’s Bellaria, as was her name, she was at her best. And from the way John kept repeatedly glancing down at where the two of them would be happily engaged in either a discussion or some form of play or physical contact, it was unusual for him to see his daemon act so warmly too.  
And what a daemon she was. An Ethiopian wolf, _Canis simensis_ , the rarest of wild dogs. A fitting match for the anything from ordinary doctor.

*

“Did you know that wolves and ravens form a natural symbiosis? The ravens lead wolves to carcasses that they can’t break into, as well as potential prey. They also play together.”

Bellaria pricked up her ears. Selwin stopped preening to watch the proceedings. “No,” John said slowly “I didn’t.” Sherlock hummed. This was the first time he had approached their shared gift verbally. “I read it earlier and thought you might find it interesting. Ethiopian wolves are the rarest of wolves you know.”

“I did, actually.”

Sherlock couldn’t help but smile at the poorly hidden pride in John’s voice.

*

“Did they get sharper gradually or could you always see them?”

“See what?”

Sherlock looked up from his microscope. This was a few weeks after he had brought up the wolf and raven symbiosis. “Don’t be coy. We both know what.” John buried his fingers in Bellaria’s fur. “I could always see them clearly. Hear them too. I never told anyone in case they thought I was mad. You?”

“Gradual improvement in clarity, obviously. It took an overdose for them to become crystal clear to me, it’s possible that I just sped up the process. Probably the best thing to come from drugs.” He stoked Selwin’s back, feeling the slight resistance of something that was there yet not quite. John didn’t have anything to say to that.

*

“I gave you my number, I thought you might call.” And finally, there he was. The source of the “The Great Game” and the reason why John was wrapped in Semtex.  
Moriarty.

Bellaria snarled, hackles bristling, then whined as Selwin cawed in fear. “He doesn’t have one Sherlock. I don’t think he has a daemon.” Sherlock had seen people with small daemons before, or daemons that kept out of sight, but he had a horrible feeling that that wasn’t the case here. He could see the truth of Selwin’s statement in the insanity in Moriarty’s eyes. But how? It shouldn’t be possible. Yet he was here, functioning, planning, killing, yet alone. Completely and utterly alone. Severed.

*

Irene Adler. The Woman. Sherlock had thought her daemon particularly fitting, given her line of work. A snake. Not just any snake, but a black mamba. Elegant, swift and formidable. Female too, which was unusual. She had been coiled around Irene’s body when they met, in a way that Sherlock supposed would have lent itself well to the air of the seductress if more people had been able to see it.  


“I don’t think he knows where to look.” She crowed as she took the offered coat. “Oh I think he knows exactly where.” Sherlock replied as both he and John followed the daemon’s progress onto the floor at her human’s feet.

  


Maybe she wouldn’t have needed to spend so much time worrying about “protection” if her daemon was corporeal. He wondered what she would have made of him if she could have seen his raven-shaped soul.

*

Another meeting. This time on a rooftop. “I’ll tell you a secret, Sherlock. I know you’ve been wondering. I cut mine away.” It took Sherlock a while for that to sink in. “Oh don’t look so shocked, surely you’ve thought about it. Always blabbering on and on, talking about morals and conscience, so boring!” Moriarty drew a knife from his pocket, an oddly gleaming knife. Selwin shrieked at the sight of it, and Sherlock put a hand to his shoulder to calm her. “You wouldn’t believe the trouble it took for me to find this, it’s funny to use it on people who can’t see what I’m doing. They still feel it though, the loss of something they never knew they had. I was tempted to use it on you or your friends, but I think it will be more fun to see you go splat.”

  


The thought of that being done to John or indeed anyone ignited a quiet fury in Sherlock. “You’re insane.”

  


“Only getting that now?"

*

Sherlock had never given much thought to how he would die. But standing on a roof talking to a stricken John with a dead body behind him was not how he had envisioned it. Even if this death would not be final, if all went well. Selwin, a phantom weight on his shoulder, ruffled her feathers, feeling identical feelings of sadness and guilt for what they were going to do as her human.

  


“Goodbye John.”

  


A muffled scream from below, then they let gravity and those complicated emotions drag them downwards towards the unforgiving pavement.

*

His return from the dead. A bit of a miscalculation on his part. Being tackled to the ground and having Bellaria pin Selwin down wasn’t quite what he was expecting. Nor was Mary, with her Harris hawk that Selwin and apparently Bellaria had taken a liking to immediately. But the judgement of daemons wasn’t often wrong.

*

Then there was the wedding, a whirlwind of envelopes, lists, purple (lilac) and people. Of speeches and almost-murders and music. And then silence, the flat somehow seeming bigger than before. “At least,” Selwin offered “You can see me. You know that you’re never alone.”

*

Of all the daemons they had encountered, the daemon of one Charles Augustus Magnusson unnerved them the most. More than the shapeshifting daemon of a schizophrenic, more than that daemon in human form they had spotted once, more even than Moriarty’s, conspicuous by her (or his) absence. This daemon hung suspended in the air beside him. A bull shark. Watching them with an expression identical to her human’s. Magnusson’s eyes lingered on Sherlock’s shoulder, where Selwin perched, then met Sherlock’s eyes. Coldly, dangerously, he smiled.

  


While discussing the return of the letters, the shark glided silently towards Magnusson’s minions and deliberately brushed against them, causing their daemons to cower and they to shiver, unaware of why the suddenly felt uneasy.

*

Since the rooftop, Sherlock had given slightly more thought to how he would die. But getting shot by his best friend’s wife hadn’t crossed his mind. According to the doctors, he owed his life to sheer stubbornness. One young doctor said to him in an undertone that Selwin had nearly vanished completely when his heart stopped, then had raced out of the room before Sherlock could ask more questions. John had only rolled his eyes when he complained about it later. “Of all things to worry about,” he said.

Magnusson paid his hospital room an unwelcome visit, the shark floating behind him like a gruesome parody of a balloon from the gift shop downstairs. “Fascinating creatures aren’t they?” Magnusson said in almost a whisper before reaching out to where Selwin was crouched at Sherlock’s side and placing his hand on her. The revulsion, the violation, the wrongness of it nearly caused Sherlock, in his weakened state, to black out. Magnusson smiled maliciously at the rapid fluttering of Sherlock’s eyelids, the pathetic efforts of Selwin to free herself, and tightened his grip before releasing her. “You’ll get used to it.” The sinister promise hung in the air like smoke long after he had gone.

Sherlock had retched over the side of his bed, then clutched his beloved daemon tighter than he had in years.

*

There was no remorse when he killed him. Nor when watching his daemon wink out of existence. The remorse came in solitary confinement, when the full consequences of his actions washed over him. At least John and Mary were safe. At least they would be able to raise their child in safety. He wondered if it would have the Sight, and what its daemon would settle as. What forms it would take before then. He sat, alone apart from his daemon, and pondered what was, what could have been and what might be.

*

Waiting for his brother to take him to the airfield, he gazed at what he had managed to scrounge together in preparation for his exile. He looked at Selwin, and they nodded in sombre unison.

*

Then the awkward goodbye, everything unsaid remaining so but filling the space between them all the same. The daemons of all present showing a little more emotions than their humans seemed capable of at that time. And then the ground was receding, falling away as Sherlock fell too, fell into the deepest recesses of his mind, into a London and a life that was his yet not his (everyone could see the daemons for a start), a vortex of drugs and history and the present day and Moriarty slicing the air between him and a shadowy spider-like form with a familiar blade and the dead rising again and John and Mary and Mycroft and water and death and grief and ghosts and fear and-

*

_Something’s coming_  



End file.
